Parents, trust me, your kids are better off without television

Last year, we got rid of our television. Pretty much, anyway: it lives in the attic of our increasingly cramped two-bedroom maisonette. The TV only comes down for mummy and daddy’s Friday night date nights and for occasional family film time.

Any time gained by putting the television on was almost invariably lost (and then some) by arguing about switching it off

With three kids under five, we did not come to this momentous bit of Ludditery lightly. However, our three kids had never really had that much screen time anyway: YouTube, tablets, and phones are verboten, and we have never opened the entertainment sluice gate by just ‘sticking the telly on’ and subjecting them to what we unapologetically call ‘twaddle’. Our television wasn’t even connected to the aerial. Generally, TV was for carefully chosen movies, Attenborough, and, most crucially, ‘witching hours’.

Parents of small children know that of which I speak – those times when, bless them, it just seems unreasonable to expect the kids to do anything other than flop onto the sofa and zonk out to a few episodes of Octonauts or Bluey.